The Speaker of the House at long last has announced the "official" start of an impeachment inquiry into the actions of the President of the United States -- apparently over the revelations that the Intelligence Community's Inspector General received a "credible" complaint by an internal whistleblower about...something... an unspecified official (presumed to be the president) did that was inappropriate and possibly illegal with regard to a foreign leader earlier this year.
OK. This is all pretty murky. The IG made a presentation to the House Judiciary Committee but was unable to supply the requested complaint itself as the Director of National Intelligence had refused to release it to Congress on advice of the Department of Justice, despite clear language in the law that required the matter to go before Congress for consideration.
Apparently the DoJ in the person of the Attorney General decided to override the law, claiming to have evaluated the matter as "not urgent."
The matter is assumed by the media to be about the president pressuring the recently elected leader of Ukraine to reopen an investigation of Hunter Biden, son of Joe Biden, with regard to his service on the board of a Ukrainian gas company some years ago along with Biden's father Joe's request of the former government of Ukraine to remove the prosecutor who had been investigating the company but who was considered irredeemably corrupt both inside and outside the country.
But it is not entirely clear that's the case.
Up to now, Nancy Pelosi has been adamantly opposed to any formal impeachment process in the House of Representatives, often claiming that "the people" aren't supportive of it, and therefore it shouldn't be done.
Suddenly something changed.
Meanwhile at the United Nations, Greta Thunberg made an impassioned speech to the Climate Forum, j'accuse style, that set the world abuzz.
Take a listen:
She shamed the leaders of the world in less than five minutes, shamed them for doing less than they should, or doing nothing at all, in the face of a global existential climate crisis that if unaddressed spells doom for her generation or shortly after. "How dare you!" she bellowed, and her rage was felt around the world.
Meanwhile in DC, the same levels of outrage had been building for years at the inaction of the US Congress and (usually) the courts to hold the current ruling regime and the president to account, to curb their excesses, and to look into impeaching Trump's sorry ass for numerous offenses against simple decency and law, let alone the unending chaos of his regime.
Nancy wouldn't do it. Republicans wouldn't do it. Nobody would. The shit show went on and on, and nothing was done about it by anybody who could do anything about it. The leadership in DC at every level of every party was failing badly.
And then Greta made her speech at the UN and things almost immediately started changing. Maybe not fixing climate, no, but starting finally to think about fixing grossly dysfunctional governments that have failed badly for a generation or more. It's long past time.
At this point, though, it may be too late, either for the climate or for governments. The tipping point may be passed, and there is no going back.
We'll see...
Showing posts with label climate change. Show all posts
Showing posts with label climate change. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 25, 2019
Saturday, September 27, 2014
So In Sum -- People's Climate March and Flood Wall Street
We need both and we need more:
[Free the Polar Bear!]
[Free the Polar Bear!]
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
So the Upshot of the Marches and Demonstrations is Divestment?
Police have arrested the polar bear #FloodWallStreet pic.twitter.com/jKq7byFUxG
— Jordan Mammo (@jordanmammo) September 22, 2014
Hm.
Interesting.
As surely everyone on earth knows by now, there has been a vast outpouring of climate change activism in recent days, hundreds of thousands taking to the streets in New York alone, perhaps millions all over the world, showing solidarity with one another and demonstrating the breadth and depth of interest in doing something about the imminent peril represented by the specter of Climate Change.
And Behold: Our Betters have heard our cries.
There will be some changes made, starting with the divestment of dozens of investment funds and foundations (150 of them? More?) from fossil fuels.
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/9/22/heirs_of_billionaire_oil_tycoon_john
That's a pretty big deal.
It seems to have come suddenly after decades of disinterest and denial by the high and the mighty regarding the constantly worsening climate chaos that has engulfed the world and already wiped out any number of species and plenty of the Rabble. Why now?
Perhaps they've been told forcefully enough for them to listen that there is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and they had better get right with their minds or it's all over for them too?
Hm.
Could be.
We'll see.
Meanwhile, Free the Polar Bear! Now!
Friday, September 19, 2014
Big Do in Santa Fe and Albuquerque on Climate Change
Sante Fe People's Climate March
-
Saturday, September 20, 12:00 PM Santa Fe Plaza
Downtown Santa FeSanta Fe, NM
A large and diverse Coalition of groups are holding events in Albuquerque and Santa Fe calling on our local officials, President Obama and the governments of the United Nations to take more significant action to curb carbon pollution by implementing the highest possible climate pollution standards on power plants and make real investments in clean energy.
EVENTS IN ALBUQUERQUE AND SANTA FE PARALLEL PEOPLE'S CLIMATE MARCH IN NEW YORK CITY
RSVP:
-------------------------------------------------------------------
We'll be in Santa Fe tomorrow for an all-day seminar on Indian arts and culture in the Modern World (ahem) which will no doubt integrate the issue of climate change and provide insight into Native American points of view and responses.
Also, too: http://peoplesclimate.org/global/
Disruption the Movie: http://vimeo.com/watchdisruption/movie
Also, too: http://peoplesclimate.org/global/
Disruption the Movie: http://vimeo.com/watchdisruption/movie
Friday, September 5, 2014
War and Destruction and Depopulation -- Never Let a Good Crisis Go To Waste
So if I'm reading the beads right, there is war crisis brewing on several fronts simultaneously, driven by a whole passel of "enemies" -- both real and manufactured -- of the GreatandGlorious Western Peoples and Way of Life, ie: The Empire of Chaos and Gloom.
Mkay.
Here we go again.
I said I dreaded what was to come Post-Labor Day and this is why, and this is largely what. Allowing and then tamping down the rage and outrage in Ferguson now seems to be part of the Plan all along. No wonder Darren Wilson was whisked into seclusion where he remains to this day. Protected, he is. By... whom? Ferguson PD or City Admin? No, not likely. More likely, some Greater Entity.
I'm even wondering if Brave Officer Wilson actually was a hit man. On a mission to find and kill him a Black Man, to trigger a "riot" that wasn't, and to keep the focus of media and public attention on the events in Ferguson, and on the topic of militarized domestic policing -- with much, much display of hardware and manpower to cow the rabble, much display of authority (in the sense of 'authoritay'), much chaos, but actually very little to show for any of it.
Was Ferguson an end-of-summer distraction? A Shark-nado for the masses? I commenced to wonder when Tim Pool was sent out to the hustings by VICE and almost immediately got himself into hot water with the Authoritays, almost (but not quite) getting arrested, then pinned down (oh yes!) by flying bullets ("shots fired! Shots fired!" he was chanting this almost like a mantra during much of his time on the mean-streets of Ferguson), then hit by a rubber bullet ("I'm hit! I'm HIT!!! I'm OK!") as he makes his way through the flying gas and smoke and Negroes of Ferguson. Oh, it was so dramatic. Breathtaking. And in the morning it seemed so false.
Was it a show or was it real?
Soon enough, the New Black Panthers, the Nation of Islam and the local clergy become recruits by and for the police to tamp down and control and channel the protests, and Captain ("Magic") Johnson, the Black Face of August Authoritay, praises their efforts to bring calm and control to the Negroes of Ferguson, to mollify them, to keep them within carefully set boundaries and to find and eject the agitators and revolutionary communists in their midst. Wait. The Fuck? Communists??? But yes, they were there, almost from the beginning, Bob Avakian's RCP, right out front carrying their banners and shouting their slogans for Revolution! Now! and what a wonder it was to see. I saw them on the Livestream, I think it was the Fox2 Livestream, and their lead agitator, IIRC, was even given a live interview early on in the protests, though he wasn't identified as RCP at that time. Not that I recall. The banner they carried and led parades with was noted but not particularly worried over. It was just part of the scene.
The only problem with the RCP is that it is largely white, and very -- VERY -- small in numbers. Their "agitation" amounted to talking smack about the police and the authoritays. Who wasn't doing that, fergawssake? But once the Men (and Women) of the Cloth were recruited to curb and channel the crowd's enthusiasm for making mischief and defying commands of constituted Authoritay, the communinists and agitators were summarily ejected from the festivities in the streets, never to be seen again.
If they were real agitators, this couldn't and wouldn't have happened. Making them out to be communists was a stroke of brilliance I haven't seen for a good long time, and it worked like a charm. To be blunt, the actual agitators within the crowds were suspected to be police plants from the outset. They were the ones "throwing things" at the police, thus triggering the gassing and grenading of the people time after time after time. Even the few looters were alleged to be plants, recruits in other words, set to their task by the police themselves, police who looked on as the looters did their business, police who looked on and refused to intervene. This was noted by the crowd and it was recognized for what it was: additional provocation enabled and quite likely directed by the police themselves. There were so many signs of this kind of thing throughout the period of protest in Ferguson.
The people seemed to understand at least some of what was going on. And their frustration was palpable. But when the high profile celebrities showed up, most of the fire went out of the protests.
The Reverends Al and Jesse led the parade of high-status Negroes who descended on Ferguson, culminating with the Highest of the Mighty, the AG Himself, Eric Holder who spoke with delegated representatives of the People, in quiet rooms off the main protest routes and listened to their concerns with gravity and skill. He listened and listened and promised swift action on the matter of the dead boy, what was his name, oh yes Michael, Michael Brown. That was it. He flew back to DC, a job well done.
And then just yesterday he announced that the whole matter of the Ferguson PD will be investigated. Thoroughly. This led to intense cheering in the usual places. Finally! Something would be done! Well, except that DoJ investigations of such things tend to take forever, and a report is delayed and delayed and delayed unless there is some kind of agitation and uproar among the People (often enough driven by another police killing) at which time the Report will be released, but then many (many!) more months pass while an "agreement" is hammered out with the affected Authoritay, only to see, years and years down the road that little or nothing has actually changed, except that the repression of particular segments of the population has been professionalized. Oh, I've seen it happen. Again and again. And if the local Authoritays wish to, they will monkeywrench the whole thing. Even professionalizing the repression can get their goats. See Oakland and Seattle among a number of examples.
So. All this was going on at the end of summer and it was quite a show, but it's over now, and we've moved on to the war drums that were beating all along, with many, many fronts opening up, a battle space that is, for all practical purposes, all of Africa, all of Asia, and all of Europe. The Entire Old World. How interesting. India was just added yesterday, as the more or less eclipsed 'al Qaeda' announced it was opening a branch operation in Mumbai or someplace to stir the pot as it were.
The Middle Kingdom, China, has been on the periphery of the Battle Space, and wisely chooses not to get involved in the squabbles of the Outer Barbarians, but does one really think that China isn't the ultimate prize coveted by the Western Powers That Be, just as it was in the 19th Century? Jebus, it's so obvious.
Our Rulers have reverted in the West to the expansionist/imperialist era of times gone by, and they can't seem to help themselves.
The Freaks and Crazies running things in Europe are absolutely bonkers as they passionately foment War Against Stalin, er Hitler, er Putin the Devil, laying waste to Ukraine in the process. The death and destruction and dislocation brought on the east and south of Ukraine has left many towns and villages totally destroyed and the main cities suffering from want and disease and scattered destruction from (highly illegal) indiscriminate shelling by untrained and antagonistic Ukrainian "troops," some of which are apparently nothing more than rampaging death squads, and most of which seem eager to desert before they are wiped out by a motivated by ill-equipped resistance.
What fresh hell is this?
The sabers are constantly rattled at Putin the Devil, but then when he rattled his own sabers the other day, the Freaks and Crazies running the goon show in Europe ratcheted back their belligerence just a hair and started talking cease-fire, blah blah blah. What cowards they are. The Kiev junta have few troops and apparently fewer supplies with which to continue their course of death and destruction in the Donbass, and a million or more refugees have already fled, and much destruction has been accomplished, along with some thousands of dead "on both sides" -- although there have been statements that up to ten thousand "Ukie" soldiers have perished in their futile attempt to dislodge and destroy the Donbass resistance, and there's general mutiny now among the remnants. Well, could be, I don't know. The news from there is heavily shaped by propaganda. What's really going on is a mystery -- except for the fact that it is obviously ugly.
Of course this could all be Phony War and Phony Pause before the all-out Nuclear Holocaust we've been waiting for... If the freaks and crazies want it so, so it will be, and there is next to nothing we can do about it apart from finding some remote corner of creation to hunker down in. Get out of the way of the inevitable. What will be will be and we don't have a say.
That's something they -- the big bad They -- always want us to believe, but it may be true more than ever this time around.
The destruction of Libya, Gaza, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and many remote corners of Africa and the bombardment of parts of the periphery of Asia continue apace. Nothing seems to interfere with the destruction and death and dislocation.
Observers question the underlying causes though. They question the legitimacy of the various metastasizing rebel outfits -- suggesting that many if not most of them are creations of the very powers which are so bravely fighting them, much as Hamas came out of the Israeli need for a Palestinian counter to Fatah. They create their own enemies, in other words, for the purpose of having a boogie man to fight.
In other words, if the natives won't rebel properly, the colonial powers will create a rebel force to fight against.
Colonialism and imperialism are the driving principles, plainly enough, but the upshot where all this induced chaos is supposed to lead, is not clear at all.
This is not the march of totalitarianism, after all, no matter how much we're supposed to believe it is. Nor is it the clash of civilizations. The level of agreement among the ostensible combatants is striking. It's not even a system against system conflict. It appears to be nothing more than a contest for dominance between related interests, like a business competition for dominance of a market with similar (worthless) products and (lack of) services by all contenders.
Colonialism and imperialism are the type-models for this global conflict, but that's not the reality of what is currently going on. There will be no colonies or overt empires as of yore, no matter who or what emerges triumphant. Instead, there will be... nothing?
The crippling drought in California seems to have shaken at least some of the Ruling Class enough for them to realize that the Climate Crisis may now be beyond their ability to take advantage of. I don't know. Droughts will come and go after all, and there is no certainty that the water crisis in California will continue indefinitely. But there is near-certainty that there can be no reversing of the Climate Crisis by main force and will alone. All the warned of calamities are inevitable therefore, and there is nothing to be done about it. It is what it is.
Thus Ultimate Chaos?
Seems to be the way they see the future. Rather than delay it, they go with the flow, inducing Chaos where it isn't yet the natural state of things, spreading it by degrees hither and thither before Nature can do it for them prefiguring the inevitable wrack and ruin.
I don't know that that's what they're thinking, but it sure looks like what they are doing.
We aren't even pawns in that game.
We are being ruled by threat and force now, not persuasion. We are being told we do not control anything, nor shall we be allowed to. We have no say in what will be.
That was the late summer lesson of Ferguson.
So it is and will be in distant lands as well. Have the Freaks and Crazies who rule us decided our fate, like herders of yore?
We. Shall. See.
(Pssst: another world is possible...)
Mkay.
Here we go again.
I said I dreaded what was to come Post-Labor Day and this is why, and this is largely what. Allowing and then tamping down the rage and outrage in Ferguson now seems to be part of the Plan all along. No wonder Darren Wilson was whisked into seclusion where he remains to this day. Protected, he is. By... whom? Ferguson PD or City Admin? No, not likely. More likely, some Greater Entity.
I'm even wondering if Brave Officer Wilson actually was a hit man. On a mission to find and kill him a Black Man, to trigger a "riot" that wasn't, and to keep the focus of media and public attention on the events in Ferguson, and on the topic of militarized domestic policing -- with much, much display of hardware and manpower to cow the rabble, much display of authority (in the sense of 'authoritay'), much chaos, but actually very little to show for any of it.
Was Ferguson an end-of-summer distraction? A Shark-nado for the masses? I commenced to wonder when Tim Pool was sent out to the hustings by VICE and almost immediately got himself into hot water with the Authoritays, almost (but not quite) getting arrested, then pinned down (oh yes!) by flying bullets ("shots fired! Shots fired!" he was chanting this almost like a mantra during much of his time on the mean-streets of Ferguson), then hit by a rubber bullet ("I'm hit! I'm HIT!!! I'm OK!") as he makes his way through the flying gas and smoke and Negroes of Ferguson. Oh, it was so dramatic. Breathtaking. And in the morning it seemed so false.
Was it a show or was it real?
Soon enough, the New Black Panthers, the Nation of Islam and the local clergy become recruits by and for the police to tamp down and control and channel the protests, and Captain ("Magic") Johnson, the Black Face of August Authoritay, praises their efforts to bring calm and control to the Negroes of Ferguson, to mollify them, to keep them within carefully set boundaries and to find and eject the agitators and revolutionary communists in their midst. Wait. The Fuck? Communists??? But yes, they were there, almost from the beginning, Bob Avakian's RCP, right out front carrying their banners and shouting their slogans for Revolution! Now! and what a wonder it was to see. I saw them on the Livestream, I think it was the Fox2 Livestream, and their lead agitator, IIRC, was even given a live interview early on in the protests, though he wasn't identified as RCP at that time. Not that I recall. The banner they carried and led parades with was noted but not particularly worried over. It was just part of the scene.
The only problem with the RCP is that it is largely white, and very -- VERY -- small in numbers. Their "agitation" amounted to talking smack about the police and the authoritays. Who wasn't doing that, fergawssake? But once the Men (and Women) of the Cloth were recruited to curb and channel the crowd's enthusiasm for making mischief and defying commands of constituted Authoritay, the communinists and agitators were summarily ejected from the festivities in the streets, never to be seen again.
If they were real agitators, this couldn't and wouldn't have happened. Making them out to be communists was a stroke of brilliance I haven't seen for a good long time, and it worked like a charm. To be blunt, the actual agitators within the crowds were suspected to be police plants from the outset. They were the ones "throwing things" at the police, thus triggering the gassing and grenading of the people time after time after time. Even the few looters were alleged to be plants, recruits in other words, set to their task by the police themselves, police who looked on as the looters did their business, police who looked on and refused to intervene. This was noted by the crowd and it was recognized for what it was: additional provocation enabled and quite likely directed by the police themselves. There were so many signs of this kind of thing throughout the period of protest in Ferguson.
The people seemed to understand at least some of what was going on. And their frustration was palpable. But when the high profile celebrities showed up, most of the fire went out of the protests.
The Reverends Al and Jesse led the parade of high-status Negroes who descended on Ferguson, culminating with the Highest of the Mighty, the AG Himself, Eric Holder who spoke with delegated representatives of the People, in quiet rooms off the main protest routes and listened to their concerns with gravity and skill. He listened and listened and promised swift action on the matter of the dead boy, what was his name, oh yes Michael, Michael Brown. That was it. He flew back to DC, a job well done.
And then just yesterday he announced that the whole matter of the Ferguson PD will be investigated. Thoroughly. This led to intense cheering in the usual places. Finally! Something would be done! Well, except that DoJ investigations of such things tend to take forever, and a report is delayed and delayed and delayed unless there is some kind of agitation and uproar among the People (often enough driven by another police killing) at which time the Report will be released, but then many (many!) more months pass while an "agreement" is hammered out with the affected Authoritay, only to see, years and years down the road that little or nothing has actually changed, except that the repression of particular segments of the population has been professionalized. Oh, I've seen it happen. Again and again. And if the local Authoritays wish to, they will monkeywrench the whole thing. Even professionalizing the repression can get their goats. See Oakland and Seattle among a number of examples.
So. All this was going on at the end of summer and it was quite a show, but it's over now, and we've moved on to the war drums that were beating all along, with many, many fronts opening up, a battle space that is, for all practical purposes, all of Africa, all of Asia, and all of Europe. The Entire Old World. How interesting. India was just added yesterday, as the more or less eclipsed 'al Qaeda' announced it was opening a branch operation in Mumbai or someplace to stir the pot as it were.
The Middle Kingdom, China, has been on the periphery of the Battle Space, and wisely chooses not to get involved in the squabbles of the Outer Barbarians, but does one really think that China isn't the ultimate prize coveted by the Western Powers That Be, just as it was in the 19th Century? Jebus, it's so obvious.
Our Rulers have reverted in the West to the expansionist/imperialist era of times gone by, and they can't seem to help themselves.
The Freaks and Crazies running things in Europe are absolutely bonkers as they passionately foment War Against Stalin, er Hitler, er Putin the Devil, laying waste to Ukraine in the process. The death and destruction and dislocation brought on the east and south of Ukraine has left many towns and villages totally destroyed and the main cities suffering from want and disease and scattered destruction from (highly illegal) indiscriminate shelling by untrained and antagonistic Ukrainian "troops," some of which are apparently nothing more than rampaging death squads, and most of which seem eager to desert before they are wiped out by a motivated by ill-equipped resistance.
What fresh hell is this?
The sabers are constantly rattled at Putin the Devil, but then when he rattled his own sabers the other day, the Freaks and Crazies running the goon show in Europe ratcheted back their belligerence just a hair and started talking cease-fire, blah blah blah. What cowards they are. The Kiev junta have few troops and apparently fewer supplies with which to continue their course of death and destruction in the Donbass, and a million or more refugees have already fled, and much destruction has been accomplished, along with some thousands of dead "on both sides" -- although there have been statements that up to ten thousand "Ukie" soldiers have perished in their futile attempt to dislodge and destroy the Donbass resistance, and there's general mutiny now among the remnants. Well, could be, I don't know. The news from there is heavily shaped by propaganda. What's really going on is a mystery -- except for the fact that it is obviously ugly.
Of course this could all be Phony War and Phony Pause before the all-out Nuclear Holocaust we've been waiting for... If the freaks and crazies want it so, so it will be, and there is next to nothing we can do about it apart from finding some remote corner of creation to hunker down in. Get out of the way of the inevitable. What will be will be and we don't have a say.
That's something they -- the big bad They -- always want us to believe, but it may be true more than ever this time around.
The destruction of Libya, Gaza, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and many remote corners of Africa and the bombardment of parts of the periphery of Asia continue apace. Nothing seems to interfere with the destruction and death and dislocation.
Observers question the underlying causes though. They question the legitimacy of the various metastasizing rebel outfits -- suggesting that many if not most of them are creations of the very powers which are so bravely fighting them, much as Hamas came out of the Israeli need for a Palestinian counter to Fatah. They create their own enemies, in other words, for the purpose of having a boogie man to fight.
In other words, if the natives won't rebel properly, the colonial powers will create a rebel force to fight against.
Colonialism and imperialism are the driving principles, plainly enough, but the upshot where all this induced chaos is supposed to lead, is not clear at all.
This is not the march of totalitarianism, after all, no matter how much we're supposed to believe it is. Nor is it the clash of civilizations. The level of agreement among the ostensible combatants is striking. It's not even a system against system conflict. It appears to be nothing more than a contest for dominance between related interests, like a business competition for dominance of a market with similar (worthless) products and (lack of) services by all contenders.
Colonialism and imperialism are the type-models for this global conflict, but that's not the reality of what is currently going on. There will be no colonies or overt empires as of yore, no matter who or what emerges triumphant. Instead, there will be... nothing?
The crippling drought in California seems to have shaken at least some of the Ruling Class enough for them to realize that the Climate Crisis may now be beyond their ability to take advantage of. I don't know. Droughts will come and go after all, and there is no certainty that the water crisis in California will continue indefinitely. But there is near-certainty that there can be no reversing of the Climate Crisis by main force and will alone. All the warned of calamities are inevitable therefore, and there is nothing to be done about it. It is what it is.
Thus Ultimate Chaos?
Seems to be the way they see the future. Rather than delay it, they go with the flow, inducing Chaos where it isn't yet the natural state of things, spreading it by degrees hither and thither before Nature can do it for them prefiguring the inevitable wrack and ruin.
I don't know that that's what they're thinking, but it sure looks like what they are doing.
We aren't even pawns in that game.
We are being ruled by threat and force now, not persuasion. We are being told we do not control anything, nor shall we be allowed to. We have no say in what will be.
That was the late summer lesson of Ferguson.
So it is and will be in distant lands as well. Have the Freaks and Crazies who rule us decided our fate, like herders of yore?
We. Shall. See.
(Pssst: another world is possible...)
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Mark Morford Explains It All For You
Doing something about Climate Change has been the terrestrial general directive for decades. From time to time, something is done, but it's never-ever enough, not even close. The atmosphere continues to fill with carbon dioxide, the global temperatures and sea levels continus to rise, and crippling droughts, destructive storms, ice and snow, and heat waves beyond measure bombard us relentlessly.
I understand this is the third year of crippling drought in parts of California (after quite a few years of higher and higher rain and snowfall in many other areas). The situation is perilous for the farming areas, not much better in the cities.
Mark Morford has been writing an often hilarious and biting column at the San Francisco Chronicle for quite a few years now, while teaching yoga and other flexible body arts on the side. He's offered a commentary on the drought situation in California, and I'll just excerpt the following:
That's where we are. There's no preventing any more, no going back. The open question is how bad it will get, what sort of adaptations will be necessary, and who among us will survive.
Welcome to the Future.
I understand this is the third year of crippling drought in parts of California (after quite a few years of higher and higher rain and snowfall in many other areas). The situation is perilous for the farming areas, not much better in the cities.
Mark Morford has been writing an often hilarious and biting column at the San Francisco Chronicle for quite a few years now, while teaching yoga and other flexible body arts on the side. He's offered a commentary on the drought situation in California, and I'll just excerpt the following:
Which is to say: dramatic climate change is no longer even remotely preventable. It’s here. It will be here for centuries. And yes, most of what’s happening is very much our fault. It’s now only a question of severity, adaptation and survival.Indeed.
That's where we are. There's no preventing any more, no going back. The open question is how bad it will get, what sort of adaptations will be necessary, and who among us will survive.
Welcome to the Future.
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
On Climate Change...
We got ourselves pretty much buried in snow the last couple of days, something we haven't seen in these parts to such an extent in a couple of years. The drought, it appears, has broken, at least for now.
Clearing the snow hasn't been that much of a problem, thankfully. So much snow is a treat for the eye, too. Blinding sometimes, but... nice.
The drought was terrible, though I'm told other recent ones have been worse. Hard to imagine, but there you are. The dust storms that arose last spring and summer for all the world resembled the Dust Bowl era, and folks were saying they hadn't seen anything like it in these parts since the Fifties, but it wasn't as bad back then as it was last spring and summer. The drought in the Thirties, though, lasted 17 years, they say, and it produced a mini Dust Bowl in this area that rivaled anything in Oklahoma and Texas. I've seen pictures. It was bad.
 |
| Dust to dust |
Saturday, November 2, 2013
Too Bad, So Sad -- The Continuing Impoverishment of the Millions
Yesterday marked a reduction in food stamp benefits for tens of millions of recipients; this is on top of the rigorous impoverishment of millions upon millions of people each and every year of the seemingly endless Recession. Obviously, the poorer you are, the less you need to eat, and if you're not working because there are no jobs available, you benefit from eating less. Extra calories would just be turned to fat as you laze around on your unemployed ass, as everyone knows.
I saw my own congressional rep on the teevee yesterday (Michelle Lujan Grisham, someone I don't know and have never had any contact with, as opposed to her predecessor, Martin Heinrich, who was either calling or having staff call all the time, and who held district constituent meetings regularly, something I don't think Lujan Grisham has ever done). Interesting that while she decried the current cut to food stamp benefits, she was quite eager, she said, to "work with Republicans" to cut food stamp benefits "responsibly." In other words, "too bad, so sad" for those who were just barely getting by as it was with their meager benefits intact. Let's cut them anyway! Responsibly. Of course.
New Mexico is a poor state, never mind all the rich folk who live here. One in five New Mexicans receive food stamp benefits, a number that has grown since the onset of the Endless Recession (endless for the proles) and since the Recession won't end, the number of beneficiaries doesn't decline. Food isn't cheap here, either. So those who are seeing a cut in benefits are essentially shit out of luck. Too bad, so sad.
I saw my own congressional rep on the teevee yesterday (Michelle Lujan Grisham, someone I don't know and have never had any contact with, as opposed to her predecessor, Martin Heinrich, who was either calling or having staff call all the time, and who held district constituent meetings regularly, something I don't think Lujan Grisham has ever done). Interesting that while she decried the current cut to food stamp benefits, she was quite eager, she said, to "work with Republicans" to cut food stamp benefits "responsibly." In other words, "too bad, so sad" for those who were just barely getting by as it was with their meager benefits intact. Let's cut them anyway! Responsibly. Of course.
New Mexico is a poor state, never mind all the rich folk who live here. One in five New Mexicans receive food stamp benefits, a number that has grown since the onset of the Endless Recession (endless for the proles) and since the Recession won't end, the number of beneficiaries doesn't decline. Food isn't cheap here, either. So those who are seeing a cut in benefits are essentially shit out of luck. Too bad, so sad.
Saturday, September 14, 2013
Biblical Floods? Biblical? Eeeeyikes,
Gallinas River in Las Vegas NM, September 13, 2013
Estes Park, CO, September 13, 2013
Rio Rancho - Southern - Flood
flood in Las Vegas NM
Colorado and New Mexico are getting hammered by unusual (for September) rainfalls, deluges if you will, inundations, quite frankly, that have spared little of the southern Rockies from flooding and washouts. In parts of Colorado and New Mexico, entire communities are isolated, surrounded by or cut off by flood waters.
Emergency Services is... stunned.
We're in the Estancia Basin, a level plain, rather high in elevation but not mountainous, though we are just east of the backsides of the Sandia and Manzano Mountains. Though we've had a lot of rain recently, the water has mostly soaked into the ground, and we haven't experienced floods right here. (There is a leak in our roof, however!)
The run off from the mountains has caught some people off-guard and I'm sure there've been some harrowing adventures as the rains have poured from the skies and run down the mountainsides.
Many areas of Albuquerque, the pueblos north of town, the Roswell area, Carlsbad, and Truth or Consequences to the south, and other widely scattered areas of New Mexico have been hard-hit by flash flooding and rivers rising, to the point where Susana la Tejana, Our Governor, has declared the entire state a disaster area. Well. Who'd a thunk it? She's actually been pretty good during disasters, given her sometimes rigid R politics.
But whatever is happening in New Mexico -- and I haven't caught up on the overnight news -- it has been much worse in parts of Colorado, particularly in the Front Range and in the Denver metro area. Much worse.
For the residents there, it has got to be literally terrorizing.
Estes Park, CO, September 13, 2013
Rio Rancho - Southern - Flood
flood in Las Vegas NM
Colorado and New Mexico are getting hammered by unusual (for September) rainfalls, deluges if you will, inundations, quite frankly, that have spared little of the southern Rockies from flooding and washouts. In parts of Colorado and New Mexico, entire communities are isolated, surrounded by or cut off by flood waters.
Emergency Services is... stunned.
We're in the Estancia Basin, a level plain, rather high in elevation but not mountainous, though we are just east of the backsides of the Sandia and Manzano Mountains. Though we've had a lot of rain recently, the water has mostly soaked into the ground, and we haven't experienced floods right here. (There is a leak in our roof, however!)
The run off from the mountains has caught some people off-guard and I'm sure there've been some harrowing adventures as the rains have poured from the skies and run down the mountainsides.
Many areas of Albuquerque, the pueblos north of town, the Roswell area, Carlsbad, and Truth or Consequences to the south, and other widely scattered areas of New Mexico have been hard-hit by flash flooding and rivers rising, to the point where Susana la Tejana, Our Governor, has declared the entire state a disaster area. Well. Who'd a thunk it? She's actually been pretty good during disasters, given her sometimes rigid R politics.
But whatever is happening in New Mexico -- and I haven't caught up on the overnight news -- it has been much worse in parts of Colorado, particularly in the Front Range and in the Denver metro area. Much worse.
For the residents there, it has got to be literally terrorizing.
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
Climate Change -- Everyone is Noticing
And yet still, "nothing" is being done. Of course, "nothing" is not quite correct. A great deal is being done, if only through economic collapse and retrenchment, but whatever is being done is not enough to curb the climate change that has been under way for many years.
I suspect that "not enough" is being done because long ago, scientists determined that at best the period of climate change that we entered into 30 years ago or so could only be slightly mitigated through strategic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, it could not be stopped or reversed.
No one has ever explained what "enough" would be, after all, "enough" to stop or reverse the change that's under way. What actually would have to be done?
No one will explain it, because it is not a pretty picture. Stopping or reversing climate change -- if it were possible at all -- would likely require a substantial reduction in human population around the globe. Like... I don't know... two-thirds reduction, or maybe even more. There is no way to do that... pleasantly.
It would require the survivors to live very simple lives in the few pockets of lush environment suitable for human habitat. Humans would have to vacate the rest or live so lightly on the land they would be barely perceptible.
In other words, it would require a return to a long-forgotten way of life for the survivors.
This fate may come no matter what, simply because the climate change that is under way, and which appears to be irreversible at this point, has already had and quite likely will continue to have increasingly catastrophic consequences, from earthquake, tsunami, violent storms, sea level rise, and so on.
One of the consequences is playing out in Japan right now with the unprecedented destruction of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and the release of large amounts of radiation and radiation products into the nearby and global environment. Exactly what is going on is still something of a mystery, but recent reports indicate that the reactor cores have melted through their containments and into the earth beneath and have reached the water table, contaminating the water and releasing radioactive products into the environment, including into the ocean. So far as can be determined, it will be impossible to even begin to control this situation for another two years, and even then there are no guarantees that control will be effective. It will not, in any case, be permanent. Though something will be tried, in effect, "nothing" can be done.
How many other catastrophic situations have been routinized and regularized is hard to judge, but the levels of destruction from storms and earthquakes alone have been almost unprecedented. It's not simply a matter of unprecedented destruction, either. In addition to all the lives lost and the ruin left behind, there's been a growing resistance to rebuilding beyond the provision of temporary shelter for survivors -- if that. Sections of cities and whole cities are being abandoned, whether due to the consequences of storm and earthquake or due to man-made economic collapse.
Economic collapse and neo-liberal reconfiguration seem to be working in tandem with climate change and other natural catastrophes to reduce the human footprint bit by bit. In other words, what "can" be done is being done -- to the extent that anything is being done about climate change.
The complaints that "nothing" is being done or "not enough" is being done about climate change seem to revolve around the notion that there ought to be a united global initiative to tackle the issue, and there isn't one. The notion that all peoples everywhere around the world can or should be united in common purpose has long been a chimera, an unachievable -- and perhaps quite an undesirable -- goal of some people for many generations. It's never been realized and it is certainly not being realized now, certainly not under the umbrella of Climate Change.
And yet...
It seems that perhaps unconsciously, perhaps quite deliberately, our ruling elites have figured out what has to happen for their own protection if not for the benefit of anyone else. Their goal seems to be to make life as miserable as possible for as many people as possible, let them fight among themselves, and let them perish from the earth in the process. This will inevitably lead to the desirable outcome of a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions; surprise, surprise. While the climate change that is under way cannot be stopped or reversed in the short term, the comfort and convenience of the ruling elites can nevertheless be assured -- with enough money. Enclaves can be prepared and protected and the rich can be taken care of -- no matter what happens to the rest of humanity.
That seems to be what's taking place. It's a rather simple scheme.
The question is will it work? And for whom? And for how long?
I suspect that "not enough" is being done because long ago, scientists determined that at best the period of climate change that we entered into 30 years ago or so could only be slightly mitigated through strategic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, it could not be stopped or reversed.
No one has ever explained what "enough" would be, after all, "enough" to stop or reverse the change that's under way. What actually would have to be done?
No one will explain it, because it is not a pretty picture. Stopping or reversing climate change -- if it were possible at all -- would likely require a substantial reduction in human population around the globe. Like... I don't know... two-thirds reduction, or maybe even more. There is no way to do that... pleasantly.
It would require the survivors to live very simple lives in the few pockets of lush environment suitable for human habitat. Humans would have to vacate the rest or live so lightly on the land they would be barely perceptible.
In other words, it would require a return to a long-forgotten way of life for the survivors.
This fate may come no matter what, simply because the climate change that is under way, and which appears to be irreversible at this point, has already had and quite likely will continue to have increasingly catastrophic consequences, from earthquake, tsunami, violent storms, sea level rise, and so on.
One of the consequences is playing out in Japan right now with the unprecedented destruction of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and the release of large amounts of radiation and radiation products into the nearby and global environment. Exactly what is going on is still something of a mystery, but recent reports indicate that the reactor cores have melted through their containments and into the earth beneath and have reached the water table, contaminating the water and releasing radioactive products into the environment, including into the ocean. So far as can be determined, it will be impossible to even begin to control this situation for another two years, and even then there are no guarantees that control will be effective. It will not, in any case, be permanent. Though something will be tried, in effect, "nothing" can be done.
How many other catastrophic situations have been routinized and regularized is hard to judge, but the levels of destruction from storms and earthquakes alone have been almost unprecedented. It's not simply a matter of unprecedented destruction, either. In addition to all the lives lost and the ruin left behind, there's been a growing resistance to rebuilding beyond the provision of temporary shelter for survivors -- if that. Sections of cities and whole cities are being abandoned, whether due to the consequences of storm and earthquake or due to man-made economic collapse.
Economic collapse and neo-liberal reconfiguration seem to be working in tandem with climate change and other natural catastrophes to reduce the human footprint bit by bit. In other words, what "can" be done is being done -- to the extent that anything is being done about climate change.
The complaints that "nothing" is being done or "not enough" is being done about climate change seem to revolve around the notion that there ought to be a united global initiative to tackle the issue, and there isn't one. The notion that all peoples everywhere around the world can or should be united in common purpose has long been a chimera, an unachievable -- and perhaps quite an undesirable -- goal of some people for many generations. It's never been realized and it is certainly not being realized now, certainly not under the umbrella of Climate Change.
And yet...
It seems that perhaps unconsciously, perhaps quite deliberately, our ruling elites have figured out what has to happen for their own protection if not for the benefit of anyone else. Their goal seems to be to make life as miserable as possible for as many people as possible, let them fight among themselves, and let them perish from the earth in the process. This will inevitably lead to the desirable outcome of a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions; surprise, surprise. While the climate change that is under way cannot be stopped or reversed in the short term, the comfort and convenience of the ruling elites can nevertheless be assured -- with enough money. Enclaves can be prepared and protected and the rich can be taken care of -- no matter what happens to the rest of humanity.
That seems to be what's taking place. It's a rather simple scheme.
The question is will it work? And for whom? And for how long?
Monday, July 29, 2013
The Albuquerque Hurricane
On the radio this morning, they were comparing the Friday storm in Albuquerque to a hurricane, though the high winds were not sustained long enough for there to be any "official" determination that it actually was a hurricane.
Wait. How far is Albuquerque from the ocean? Let's see. Albuquerque to Santa Monica Beach: 806 miles via (what's left of) Route 66. Albuquerque to (say) Corpus Christi: 890 miles. In other words, Albuquerque is nowhere near an ocean, no matter how you figure distances.
A hurricane in the middle of the continent, along the Rio Grande Rift Valley? Has anybody heard of such a thing before?
No. Actually not. No one has heard of such a thing, and the weather service was both surprised and perplexed. They still haven't figured out exactly what happened, though the news video below attempts to describe it.
A number of local storms coalesced over the Rio Grande and proceeded along the river valley at a brisk but rather stately pace, dumping huge amounts of rainfall. The winds blew at near-hurricane speeds at least briefly.
Damage was much more extensive than initially reported or believed. Thousands of people were caught out in the open at concerts at the
There was extensive flooding throughout the Rio Grande Valley. Corrales was particularly hard hit when rivers of mud cascaded through the village leaving huge mounds of sand and mud in people's yards, on village streets, and in practically every exposed corner of an ordinarily placid and very expensive semi-rural enclave in the Albuquerque metro area.
Out here in the Estancia Valley, the rains came after the storm in Albuquerque had passed down the Rio Grande Valley into Los Lunas and Belen and points south. The rain was hard and steady here, but there was high wind only at the outset of the storm; later on, there was a steady wind from the north, maybe 25-30 miles an hour. The rains lasted for hours here, though the storm was over in a little more than an hour in Albuquerque.
There have been a number of "microburst" events in Albuquerque and around the area during this monsoon season. There has been a lot of damage because of them -- downed trees and power lines mostly -- but Friday's storm was orders of magnitude worse. No one had ever seen anything like it.
What I noticed while watching the storm coverage on the teevee as it happened was that the worst of the storm was staying quite closely along the Rio Grande. I've never seen a storm follow a river valley so closely, though when it got closer to Socorro it spread out -- the Rio Grande Rift Valley spreads out in the vicinity of Socorro and points south.
Many people are ambivalent about this weather. First, there is a welcoming of the rain, for it is desperately needed, even in the giant amounts that have been falling lately. Better to have it than not. The storm damage is no fun, of course, but even that is tolerable in reasonable amounts. People are used to cleaning up and making repairs after storms.
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
Cold Global Warming
Well. Here we sit in central New Mexico, on the east side of the Central Mountain Chain, and it's darned near freezing, well, close enough, 60° at 7:45pm.
According to the "news" the whole rest of the country is roasting in high heat and humidity, and I checked some of the places we know well for temps right now (7:45ish PM MDT):
77° in Sacramento
74° in Los Angeles
81° in Seattle
63° in San Francisco
84° in Chicago
87° in New York
74° in Sarasota
91° in Baltimore
62° in Flagstaff
67° in Albuquerque
66° in Anchorage
It's seems we're in the coldest place in the country at the moment. The sky is cloudy, there are individual drops of rain from time to time, but no real storm. The wind was high for a little while today, but not like some days when the dust rolls in (we've had a couple of major dust storm incidents the past couple of days). The weather people say the weather we're having now is part of a storm over Texas, moving into New Mexico slowly overnight, fed by moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, and it would be "Classic Monsoon" except that the weather is rotating in the wrong direction. Very strange.
We've had rain most days since June 30, and some people say it's almost enough to break the drought, but I don't think so. Despite the rain, we still have to irrigate some of the plants. It can be hot and very dry in the daytime. The sunflowers sometimes take the heat and daytime dryness particularly hard. But the last couple of days have been very mild and now it's almost cold. They say there will probably be heavy rain during the night, and more tomorrow. Cool or moderate temperatures to continue through the rest of the week and into the weekend. Amazing.
According to the "news" the whole rest of the country is roasting in high heat and humidity, and I checked some of the places we know well for temps right now (7:45ish PM MDT):
77° in Sacramento
74° in Los Angeles
81° in Seattle
63° in San Francisco
84° in Chicago
87° in New York
74° in Sarasota
91° in Baltimore
62° in Flagstaff
67° in Albuquerque
66° in Anchorage
It's seems we're in the coldest place in the country at the moment. The sky is cloudy, there are individual drops of rain from time to time, but no real storm. The wind was high for a little while today, but not like some days when the dust rolls in (we've had a couple of major dust storm incidents the past couple of days). The weather people say the weather we're having now is part of a storm over Texas, moving into New Mexico slowly overnight, fed by moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, and it would be "Classic Monsoon" except that the weather is rotating in the wrong direction. Very strange.
We've had rain most days since June 30, and some people say it's almost enough to break the drought, but I don't think so. Despite the rain, we still have to irrigate some of the plants. It can be hot and very dry in the daytime. The sunflowers sometimes take the heat and daytime dryness particularly hard. But the last couple of days have been very mild and now it's almost cold. They say there will probably be heavy rain during the night, and more tomorrow. Cool or moderate temperatures to continue through the rest of the week and into the weekend. Amazing.
Saturday, December 1, 2012
The Weather Outside...
Weather satellite images courtesy of the Earth Science Office in Huntsville, Alabama.
When we bought this place in New Mexico seven years ago, a friend in California remarked, "Oh, so you'll have a place to escape when everything goes to shit, eh?" And I said, "Yeah, pretty much." We laughed, ruefully.
Here it is, December 1, and the high desert weather we're enjoying is essentially still Indian Summer. It can get cold overnight, sometimes into the teens, but daytime temps are in the 60s, quite balmy. The skies are pristine deep blue, hardly a cloud to be seen, the nighttime skies can take your breath away with their clarity and billions and billions of brilliant stars. There's been just a tiny bit of rain, and a tinier bit of snow, since we've been here. There is little wind -- which is unusual, as this area tends to be windblown most of the time (thus the wind-farms down in Willard, for example). The only thing about it is that it is so dry, people are once again worrying about yet another drought.
Meanwhile in California, in the area we left, The Deluge appears to have come. We lived in an area that had been reclaimed from a seasonal lakebed, and our streets would flood from time to time. We were well aware that if the levees were overtopped (which seemed unlikely, but you never knew) our area would be under several feet of water, perhaps right up to our doorstep. Given the sea-level predictions we knew about in 2005, it seemed quite possible that large areas of the Central Valley (and of Sacramento in particular) would become part of an extended San Francisco Bay sometime in the not too distant future, and there would be little that could be (or more particularly, would be) done about it.
We didn't count on the storms accelerating the process, however, though we were aware that the storms had been turning what was historically a rather dry area into quite a wet one over the course of the previous ten years or so.
I described what was happening to central California as if the region had been shoved some 700 miles northward into the rainforest. Though that was a bit of a stretch, it was remarkable how wet the Central Valley had become. One of the consequences was a very lush urban forest. So lush, in fact, that it had become dangerous to life and limb. What to do about it was a constant worry of public officials. Trees were being uprooted regularly in the many storms, trees and limbs were crashing down all over the place -- sometimes spontaneously, without the impetus of storms -- fire hazards were developing in the summertime, and people just weren't adapting quickly enough. It was impossible to keep up.
Those who lived through the recent climate changes in Central California were aware that the area had gone from quite dry to quite wet in a very short time, but the Official Story tended to claim the changes were only very slight, hardly perceptible, and that these Wet Periods were historically common, going back hundreds of years, so there was no certainty that there was some sort of connection with the realities of Global Climate Change. Officially, the area was still in "drought" for years after the rains came. And by some accounts, it's still in drought even though average rainfall has increased rather smartly. I never knew whether this was Official Denial or something else, but it was strange...
Here in New Mexico, we're dealing with an opposite set of circumstances, seemingly perpetual drought, or rather, droughts that persist for longer than expected, broken briefly (large amounts of snow or rain in a short period of time), then return to critically dry conditions that seem to last much longer than before. The weather patterns are different, leading to overall dryer conditions which in some areas are much dryer. (I intend to post a description of just where we live one day, but not quite yet.)
Where we are is in an intersection of weather patterns. It's actually -- usually -- wetter here than on the west side of the mountains along the Rio Grande. There's at least the chance of more rainfall, but the weather comes in distinct narrow bands. It can be raining hard a few miles on either side of us, but be dry as dust right where we are. Same with snow. Or conditions can reverse: much rain and snow where we are, frightfully dry on either side. It seems that conditions overall are a good deal dryer now than seven years ago, but there was an even dryer period in the interim, so from a relative standpoint, the last few years have been somewhat "wet." It's as if this area had moved some hundreds of miles south into the Chihuahuan Desert of Mexico. It's not a dire situation (yet), but it's not particularly reassuring, either. So few people live in this region, however, that the human presence is not (yet) a huge stress on the land and such water as there is. People are aware that there was a lingering drought in the 1670's that caused the abandonment of the pueblos in the region, and it could happen again. We're not there yet, but it's wise to be on the alert.
In that context, the bloated size of Albuquerque is troublesome. It's New Mexico's one Big City, and from an environmental standpoint, it's way too big. Many times the size it "ought to be." It has only been able to grow as big as it is by extracting practically all the underground water and slurping up every drop it can from the Rio Grande. Realistically, it cannot grow any more, but it will try to anyway. It's the way of cities in the grip of real estate boomers and speculators. They are chock-a-block in ABQ -- and champing at the bit to make more money. The fact that Indian Pueblos border Albuquerque on the north and south and strictly limit the city's growth in those directions serves as a brake on rampant expansion and a reminder of how fragile the environment really is.
One thing that seems clear, though, is that the people in New Mexico are aware of their environmental limitations and they seem to be able to adapt reasonably well -- and reasonably quickly -- to changing conditions whereas people in California seem intent on fighting what's happening or refusing to adapt to changes.
The contrast can be striking sometimes.
We realize we have a lot of work to do on our own outlook before we can say we've adapted to conditions and changing conditions in New Mexico, and we'll make many mistakes along the way. We have a great deal to learn about the local/region environment and how best to live within it.
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